


Winter Enchanted

by starling



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ella Enchanted Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9463013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starling/pseuds/starling
Summary: Ivan knows there's something unusual about his stepbrother Bucky, and he's determined to solve the mystery.(Ella Enchanted, with Bucky, in Russia. I haven't worked out all the details yet. Or any of the details.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky Barnes has a terrible gift: the gift of obedience. An alternate history of 19th century Russia, where being gay is fine and the details about the Russian geography, military, and domestic life are all slightly different. And I didn't do the name thing. Otherwise, it's totally Russia.
> 
> Bit dark but not an awful lot darker than Ella Enchanted, truth be told.

**The First Winter**

Ivan had long suspected there was something not-quite right with his stepbrother. The way Nat hovered around, more like a nursemaid than a housekeeper, like Bucky might break like an egg even though he was twelve years old and perfectly healthy. (Even now, she stood talking with Ivan's mother, and could not help herself from glancing over.) The way Bucky reacted extremely to the most mundane situations, like he was daring him to a fight. Earlier that week Ivan had asked him to help reorder the books in the study and Bucky had looked at him as if he'd asked him to help burn the house down. And the old house - three creaking floors of it, vast and crumbling and never cold even when Ivan woke in the middle of the night with the fires unlit - positively cried out that there were mysterious going-ons. Ivan had known there was something not right when he moved here a year ago, after his mother married Bucky's father, and he was determined to find out what it was.

This particular morning, though, Ivan wasn't thinking too hard about mysteries or moody stepbrothers. It was a bright morning in early December, and the three brothers - Ivan, Bucky, and the younger Peter - were all wrapped head to toe in coats and scarves and hats and every warming item their mother could coax them into wearing. The pale winter sun was breaking through the grey-pink mist, and the boys were whooping and throwing snowballs a safe distance from the house while Nat and their mother stood talking on the porch.

"Catch!" Ivan shouted, and threw a compact projectile through the air directly at Bucky's face. Bucky scowled as his arm shot up, whip-fast, and caught the snowball, but soon he had rearranged his features into a malicious grin and passed the snowball right on to Peter, hitting him squarely in the chest. "Sorry Pete!" he called out once he saw Peter wasn't laughing.

"I'm bored of snowballs," Peter called out solemnly, crossing his arms like a schoolteacher. "Let's play something else." Ivan and Bucky duly jogged over to join him, Bucky looking rather sheepish.

"Absolutely, Peter," said Ivan, "What do you want to play?"

"Hide and seek!" Peter grinned. "I'm the best at finding people. You both go and hide, as hidden as you can and don't come back or make a sound until I find you! You don't have to make it easy for me! I'll count to a hundred, and then I'll -"

"Wait a second, Pete," Bucky interrupted. "You don't mean we shouldn't come back at all, do you? What if you give up?" This pedantry was characteristic of Bucky, and it irritated Ivan every time. Why couldn't he just let Peter relax, why did he always have to be splitting hairs?

Peter scrunched up his little face, confused. "Why would I give up?"

"Well, if we're 'as hidden as we can' we'll be very hard to find, wouldn't you prefer if we were just 'quite hidden'"?

This was too much for Ivan. "Shut up, Bucky, he'll find us just fine, now go and hide." Bucky hesitated for a moment, a pained look on his face, then turned around and jogged towards the dark line of the trees, a hundred feet or so from the front of the house. Ivan slipped off in the opposite direction, towards the road, and before long he couldn't hear Peter's counting.

Ivan crouched behind a low wall, and settled in to wait. Despite what he'd said in front of Peter, he knew he and Bucky would both make themselves easy to find. There was no fun in hiding for any great length of time, not in this weather. Fifteen minutes later, Pete came past calling their names.

"Bucky! Ivan! I'm coming to find you!" So Bucky was still hidden too. Ivan wouldn't call out, not if he was the first, but Peter was thorough and caught him anyway. "Got you!" he squealed, grabbing Ivan by the shoulders, and Ivan laughed as he stood up and lifted his brother onto his back.

"Oh!" he groaned with exaggerated tiredness, "There's a very heavy person on my back! He's had too many puddings! I can't take it!"

Ivan carried Peter back to where they had started the game, and the two of them were about to head into the woods when their mother called them. "Come into the house, boys!"

Ivan walked over to the porch and set Peter down on the steps. "Sorry, we were just playing hide and seek. I can go fetch Bucky."

"Yes, dear, and hurry, Natalia has something important to tell us." Ivan took a second look at his mother - had she been crying? He felt a terrible sense of foreboding, but didn't want to start second-guessing. She wanted to talk to all of them, so he would fetch Bucky.

Fetching Bucky turned out to be a harder task than Ivan had anticipated. Ivan wandered the woods for the better part of an hour, calling his stepbrothers name. "This isn't funny, Bucky, something has happened, we need to go home," he called out. "Bucky, where are you?" Eventually he tired of it - he was losing feeling in his fingers, worried about Nat's mysterious news, and sick of Bucky and his games. "Fine, stay out here! He yelled. "Freeze to death, see if I care."

Ivan ran back to the house, where he found his mother waiting on the porch with Nat. "I can't find him anywhere," he shrugged, "I was shouting out for him but he didn't come out. We never usually go far, maybe he's feeling competitive."

Ivan's mother looked out to the woods, and he knew his theory was right. Something terrible had happened. "Lizaveta, go inside and tell them. I'll find Bucky," Nat said, and Ivan's mother nodded. "Will you tell him?" Nat nodded, and walked out towards the dark woods, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow behind her.

That was another of Bucky's strangenesses. He was closer to Nat, who was only a housekeeper, than he was to his stepmother or his real father. Ivan had always perceived this as a kind of slight against his mother - he had resented his new circumstances when he first arrived here, but had come to see the Major, if not as a father, certainly as a respected figure of authority and part of his family. And Ivan and Peter had always treated Bucky as a brother, and their mother had treated him like her own child. And while Bucky had never been unkind, he was sullen, moody, unpredictable, and gave the unmistakable impression that Nat was his family and the rest of them just lived in his house.

Ivan walked into that house now, and followed his mother into the main room where Peter was sat cross-legged on a chair. "I wanted to wait for your brother, but I think I should say this now," his mother began, haltingly. 'Mikhail - your stepfather - is dead."

Ivan froze. This - was not what he had expected.

"There was a big battle, far far away," she continued. "He was very brave. He was a hero. And he died." She started crying again, and Ivan went to embrace her. Peter started crying too now, great wracking sobs, and Ivan was a little old to cry but cried a little anyway.

"We must all brave," Ivan said, putting an arm around his mother and holding on tight. His mind was racing with questions, like whether there would be a pension, and whether the house would belong to Bucky or Ivan's mother. Now that death had stepped into the home, Ivan had visions of Bucky dying out in the snow after Ivan had said those terrible things.

Ivan didn't speak his fears aloud, or ask his questions. He stood there in the parlour with his mother and brother, all three hugging one another as if to remind themselves that they at least were solid and whole and alive. For the first time, the house felt very cold.


End file.
